Warning: this chapter has explicit sexual content.

CHAPTER 16

LÊ DÔNG

"Sister, I am sorry that I cannot be of more help, but it happened so fast, and they were all wearing masks. I saw nothing but their eyes. I cannot possibly identify them."

Caprica Six nodded sympathetically, but Sergeant Aurelia Hadrian wasn't about to let the massacre that had claimed seven lives in the attack on the hospital go. She didn't give a damn about Mike Robert; from her point of view, the butcher had got off far too easily. D'Anna and the three Eights had all downloaded, and they appeared none the worse for wear, but Hadrian wasn't going to chalk the two human nurses up to collateral damage. They had been murdered in cold blood, and there was no way that she was going to let the killers get away with it.

"Well, did any of them say anything? Can you at least tell us whether we're dealing with men or women here?" Hadrian made no effort to stifle her irritation. She had four witnesses to their own murders sitting right in front of her, and so far none of them had been able to give her one useful fact.

"Two of them exchanged a few words," one of the Eights said with a frown. "I can't remember exactly what they said … I wasn't really paying attention. But their voices … they were definitely male."

"So, at least two of the terrorists were men," Adama noted thoughtfully. There was no longer any doubt in his mind, or the President's, that they were dealing with a terrorist incident, not a simple murder. D'Anna's description of the attack had been all the more riveting because it had been delivered so calmly. One of the four masked assailants had sought her out. He had deliberately walked up to her, and without saying a word had put a bullet in her brain. If Mike Robert's mutilated corpse was a silent testament to rage, then D'Anna's cold-blooded execution hinted at religious intolerance of the worst sort. The human population of New Caprica was steadily converting to the cylon faith, and if their church could be said to have a leader, D'Anna was it. Her sermons, which were always staged in the late afternoon light down at the river's edge, and the sense of absolute conviction that animated her when she spoke to her congregation of a creative and loving power at work in the universe, were drawing larger and larger numbers of worshippers. D'Anna's vision of a transcendent divinity with a plan for all of His creatures appealed strongly to those humans who wanted to believe in something larger than themselves, but who had lost their faith in the Lords of Kobol.

The admiral personally found it easy to understand why. The Lords were so obviously products of the human imagination. They were human beings writ large—immortal and omnipotent, but capricious and unpredictable. They were rife with sin—and their sins were the sins of man. He honestly didn't know how any sensible person could worship such poseurs. He had not yet found a place in his heart for Shelly's God, but he had no objection to raising their daughter in her faith. If that required him to go through the motions with her, he could do so without difficulty.

"Did you see their hands," Hadrian pressed. "Was the skin rough and calloused, or smooth? Could you see any tattoos?"

The Eights looked at one another, and silently shook their heads.

"The man who shot me had dirt under his fingernails … dirt, or grease." D'Anna had closed her eyes, and she was reliving the image in slow motion. The man pausing in front of her, the gun coming up, the flash …

"He was a laborer of some kind," she concluded. "His knuckles were raw and chafed, but there were no tattoos … at least, none that I could see."

"That's good, Mrs. Cottle … that's very, very good. It means that he probably wasn't Tauron. Now, what about his clothing? Start with the shoes. Were they clean, or caked with dried mud?"

"They were muddy," one of the Eights volunteered. "I remember thinking that we would have to wash down the floor after they departed."

The sergeant nodded her head in agreement. She had already noted the patches of dried mud that here and there dotted the floor, and in two places tufts of damp grass had transferred from the soles of the killers' shoes. She was actually testing the four Cylons. There was a lot of forensic evidence at the crime scene, and it all pointed to men who had recently been out in the fields. Cylons were supposed to have total recall, and she was certain that these four could remember a lot more than they gave themselves credit for. All she had to do was probe … probe, and push hard.

"There was crusted dirt on their trousers, and the man who attacked me had mud smeared all over his shirt. I think … I think that he had come in from the fields, and that he had wiped his hands on his clothing."

"Thank you, Sharon; you are a very good witness. I promise you that, with your help, we're going to catch these bastards."

"My name is Rebecca," the Eight said somewhat resentfully. "Rebecca Keikeya."

"What?" Hadrian was truly aghast; no one had told her that still another of their Cylon victims was part of the inner circle. She quickly scanned the sea of faces that were lurking just beyond the tape that they had used to fence off the crime scene. Sure enough, now that she was searching for him, the gangly frame and distinctively curly hair of Billy Keikeya were easy to spot. He was staring fixedly at his wife, the deep love and concern that he felt for her written all over his face.

"Mrs. Keikeya, please accept my apologies. I did not recognize you."

"That's all right, Sergeant", Becky said with a small smile; "I didn't recognize you either. I only returned to nursing quite recently."

"You were working on the resurrection ship," Helo recalled. He knew—everyone on New Caprica knew- that that was where the Keikeyas had first met. Their romance had been so torrid, and their passion for one another so intense, that for a time the young couple had been a source of seemingly endless amusement for man and machine alike. And then Karl had an appalling thought.

"Becky, you weren't … you weren't pregnant, were you?"

"No," she admitted in a voice that equally mixed relief with regret. "We have been trying, but so far without success."

Karl didn't know whether to be relieved or saddened. Eights instinctively wanted children, and discovering that they had been created specifically to bear them had made their collective failure just that much harder to bear.

"Were they wearing jewelry of any kind?" Caprica posed the question because it was the sort of detail that any Six would notice. She was, however, less sure of the Threes and Eights. They had never been as concerned with their appearance as the average Six.

"A bracelet," D'Anna murmured. "When he brought his left hand up to steady the gun, I saw a bracelet. It was leather, studded, and quite thick."

"Would you describe it as fancy, or plain?" Hadrian's hand drifted towards her pocket.

"It was quite ordinary in appearance. Is that significant?"

"Did it look something like this?" The sergeant reached into her jacket, and pulled out a crude leather bracelet.

D'Anna stared at it in perplexity. Then she looked up at Galactica's one-time master of arms before turning to her husband for an explanation.

"It's Sagittaron," Cottle explained; "and it's not really a bracelet. It's an amulet. The Sagittarons wear them whenever they fall ill. The poor fools actually believe that this trinket has healing properties."

"Mrs. Cottle, did any Sagittarons come to you earlier in the day looking for medical assistance?" Aurelia knew the answer, but she was looking for a name.

"Yes," D'Anna replied. "A few minutes before the attack, a woman came in and specifically requested to see Doctor Robert. I went to find him, but when I came back she was gone. The gunmen arrived a few seconds later."

Adama and Baltar exchanged glances, but neither of them really needed to say anything.

"Did she give her name … this woman who came to see you?" Hadrian knew that a name would mean that they had struck tylium.

"King … Mrs. Portia King."

"Right … that's it, then." The president had heard more than enough to justify issuing a warrant. "Caprica, I want you to arrest this woman, King. Charge her with being an accessory to murder … seven counts. Send in an entire squad if that's what it takes, but I want this woman behind bars in the next hour. I want her interrogated, and I don't give a damn how far you have to go to get to the truth. Do whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes, Mr. President?"

"Whatever it takes," Baltar concurred.

"Six, I'd recommend that you use our marines, preferably people with some experience at crowd control. And they should dress in full combat gear." Tempers were running high in the settlement, and Adama feared that the Sagittarons would counter force with force. There was no way for anyone to know how many weapons the religious zealots had at their disposal, but the real imponderables were the number of heavy weapons in their arsenal, and their ability to use them. There was simply no point in taking chances.

. . .

"Kara, what were you thinking? More to the point, were you thinking?"

Starbuck clenched her fists and pursed her lips while she searched for a suitably clever response. Now that she had emerged from the shadowy recesses of hybrid Kara's mind, the ill-tempered pilot was positively spoiling for a long overdue fight. She badly needed to work off her mounting sense of frustration, but beating up the hapless Melania Peripolides had done nothing to ease the tension.

There was no way, however, that Starbuck was going to pick a fight with a Six: she had learned that lesson the hard way when she had returned to Caprica to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo. Besides, Rachel and Miriam were two of her favorite moms. She knew that they were on the Adriatic for one reason, and one reason only. They were babysitting their often petulant daughter, whose temper tantrums were the stuff of legends.

"Hey, I'm a Viper pilot, all right?" The two Sixes had waited until they could confront Kara in the privacy of her own quarters. Miriam was covertly studying the mural that she had been painting over the last week, but Rachel was clearly intent upon some serious parenting. Her eyes were boring a hole in Kara's brain.

"We don't think," she added defensively. "We react. In the cockpit, thinking gets you killed!"

"Look around you, Kara. Does this look like the cockpit of your old fighter?" Rachel was relentless. "You're in command of a deep space exploration vessel—one without parallel in the history of the Colonies. Cylons, humans, centurions … we're all prepared to follow your orders, but we have to have confidence in your ability to lead …"

"It's a small ship, Kara." Miriam had decided to spice up Rachel's lecture with a few pointed comments of her own. "We may be out here for a year or more, so it's to be expected that the humans will argue and occasionally even fight. It's the nature of the beast. But you are our daughter. We hold you to a higher standard. You're supposed to separate the combatants, not start brawls of your own."

"Is this about Boomer?" In the past, Kara had always treated sex as good, healthy fun, but Rachel was acutely aware of the fact that the Eight had breached all of her daughter's defenses. Kara had finally fallen in love, and in Boomer's absence she had stubbornly insisted upon remaining celibate. The Six was firmly of the opinion that monogamy and its attendant frustrations had begun to cloud Kara's judgment and poison her behavior.

"Let's leave Sharon out of this," Starbuck snapped. Melania's words had cut far more deeply than she cared to admit, and she didn't want anyone to see just how vulnerable she had become.

"If that's the problem," Miriam helpfully remarked, "we can fix it. As you are well aware, the Eights on this ship have been systematically pairing off with humans, but by design one of our sisters has been holding herself in reserve … for you."

"Oh, I don't believe this," Starbuck snorted. "Now, on top of everything else, you're pimping for me?"

"No, Kara; that's not what we're saying. The truth is that we strongly disagreed with the admiral's decision to separate the two of you, so we decided to do something about it. And it's important for you to understand that Boomer fully supports what we've done."

"When any of us download," Rachel patiently explained, "our core consciousness- all of our memories, thoughts, and feelings—are transferred to the stream, but they're compartmentalized. There's a layer of general information that any Cylon can access, and immediately beneath it is a second layer that's held in reserve for other copies of that particular model. At bottom, it's the sharing of these data that gives any one model its sense of collective identity. But our feelings … the intimate experiences that make each of us a uniquely sentient being … are buried deeper still, and they are quite literally behind lock and key. In Boomer's case, every Eight has the key that allows access to the core of her being, but to do so without her permission would constitute an intolerable invasion of her privacy."

"This is bullshit," Starbuck crudely interrupted. "Sharon … Helo's wife … she has all of Boomer's memories. In the museum, when I first met her? She knew things about me … about my drunken escapades … that I never shared with anyone except Boomer. Gods! I was in love with her back then, but I was too damned stupid to realize it! Everything I told her … everything … became some kind of sick joke that the whole frakking Cylon collective could enjoy. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?"

"You're wrong, Kara; you simply refuse to come to grips with the fact that Boomer was a soldier, and that she volunteered to infiltrate the Colonies. Sharon's mission was to seduce Lieutenant Agathon by pretending to be Boomer, and playing upon his feelings for her. Boomer willingly gave her sister access to her deepest feelings for Galen … for Karl … for you. But it stopped there, Kara. No other Eight has ever gone in and explored Boomer's feelings for you—it's simply too dangerous. Look at it this way. Suppose an Eight wants to learn more about love … about passion … so that she will have a yardstick against which to measure her own dawning feelings when she's attracted to a human. The temptation to learn from a Boomer or a Sharon is obvious, but you are turning a blind eye to the equally obvious danger. We don't get to parse what we learn in the stream. Any Eight who's stupid enough to download Boomer's memories isn't simply going to learn about love in the abstract. She's going to fall in love with you."

"And that's what you've done," Starbuck shrieked. "I'm such a mess that you got another Sharon to volunteer to give me pity fraks? Gods, I frakking do not believe this!"

"No, child; no!" Rachel swept Kara into her arms and hugged her close. "The day before we broke orbit, Boomer went over to the resurrection ship, and downloaded her entire personality into a new body … a body without any preexisting memories. This was Boomer's gift to you, Kara—a way for the two of you to be together and to go on loving each other even when you were thousands of light years apart. Boomer's waiting for you, Kara; right now. She's waiting just outside the hatch … waiting to love you. The only memories that she can truly call her own are the ones that she has built up here on the Adriatic. But Boomer wanted to be fair to both of you, so she insisted that this Eight take another name … something that would give her value as a person. We allowed the Eight to choose her own name. We don't understand why she knowingly chose to commit blasphemy in the process, but we do not have the right to countermand her choice."

Miriam opened the hatch, and silently beckoned for the Eight to enter. Starbuck's eyes went wide, and she involuntarily sucked in her breath. This was Boomer, all right—down to the smallest detail. The expression on her face was one that Starbuck would happily carry with her to the grave—the exquisite sense of uncertainty that had swept across Sharon's features when Kara had taken control of the projection of the Eight's dream house on Picon. This is what Sharon had looked like in the moment when Kara had taken her clothing away and replaced it with a filmy negligee that left nothing to the imagination. Standing there, mutely staring at the woman she loved, Starbuck suddenly became aware of the blood pounding through her veins. She could feel the heat of her body's awakening arousal, the fire that had already begun to consume her.

"Kara, this is Athena. We'll leave the two of you to become better acquainted."

Without another word, Rachel and Miriam filed out of the chamber, and quietly closed the hatch behind them.

. . .

"Are you Mrs. Portia King?" Sergeant Hadrian's demeanor was casual, but in reality she was studying the woman closely. Fear was a good indicator of guilt, and Portia King had the look of a very frightened woman indeed. The Sagittaron was in her late forties or early fifties, with curly hair that was neither black nor brown, and already turning to gray. She had an ordinary face, and Aurelia doubted whether in her youth she had even been considered attractive.

"Yes; I'm Mrs. King. What do you want?"

"We'd like to ask you a few questions about the massacre at the hospital. You appear to have left just a few seconds before the gunmen arrived. Would you come with us, please?"

"Go with you … where?"

Hadrian shifted her attention to an angry young man who had been lying on a cot at the rear of the tent, but who now had his arm wrapped protectively around the woman's shoulders. The sergeant guessed that this was Willie King, the son who was supposed to be coping with the Mellorak disease. But if he was ill, it sure wasn't obvious.

"We would like your mother to accompany us to police headquarters, Mr. King …"

"She's not going anywhere," the boy protested.

"Am I under arrest," Mrs. King calmly inquired.

"We would prefer you to come of your own volition … do your duty as a citizen … help the police in their investigation of a terrible crime."

"Am I under arrest," the woman asked again, this time in a much firmer voice.

"If it comes to it … yes; I have a warrant for your arrest."

"And what are the charges," she persisted.

"You have been charged with sedition, and with being an accessory before the fact to seven counts of murder."

"So," Mrs. King smiled malevolently; "you think that I'm a terrorist."

"I think that you are in very serious trouble, Mrs. King. But I also believe that you possess information that would materially assist us in our investigation. If you choose to cooperate, you will be helping yourself in the process."

"Help a bunch of Caprican butchers persecute my people? I don't think so." Portia King's eyes were on fire, now, and Hadrian and the squad of marines crowding the tent around her knew that they were in the presence of a true believer.

"Then you're under arrest," Aurelia tersely replied. She whipped the woman around, and swiftly cuffed her hands behind her back.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing," Willie screamed. He put his hand on Hadrian's chest, and tried to push her away.

"And that's assault," the sergeant grunted. She beckoned to one of the heavily armored soldiers to cuff the boy as well. "And assaulting a police officer in the performance of his or her duty is a very serious felony offense. I'm placing you under arrest as well. Mr. Ferris, get them out of here."

"Yes, Ma'am," the burly marine replied. He nodded in the direction of Private Elijah Parr, a sour-faced mountain of a man whom Hadrian had chosen specifically for this job because Parr intimidated everyone who crossed his path. The two Colonial marines, who were now on detached duty with the New Caprica police, shoved their prisoners out of the tent—and straight into a mob of angry Sagittarons. There were plenty of guns in evidence, and thoughts of the Gideon massacre began to run through Ferris' head. Only this time … this time, it would be a straight up fight.

. . .

Starbuck slowly circled the Eight, marveling at the utter perfection of cylon technology. The way that she was standing was pure Boomer … the proud cast of her shoulders … the smell of her hair. Kara instinctively guessed that she would also have Boomer's voice, and that her speech would be littered with the colonial turns of phrase that made it so easy to separate her Eight from all the others.

Athena followed the blond-haired pilot with her eyes. In her mind, she could see the contours of Kara's body. She drew upon her memories to catalog its nooks and crannies. They had made love so many times that she knew exactly where Kara liked to be touched with exploring fingers, lips, and tongue. She knew all the right words to say—how could she not, when their very souls had long since fused?

"Kara … I …"

"Shut up," Starbuck growled. "I don't wanna hear a peep out of you, so just shut the frak up." She stopped in front of the Eight, and leaned into her face. "I don't like your jacket," she snarled. "It reminds me of Penelope Dorcas, the smart-ass sorority queen I was humping before I enlisted."

Athena hastily unbuttoned the tight-fitting cream jacket that she had favored since birth. She liked the way that it complemented her hair and drew attention to her breasts. She had a good body, and she was proud of it.

She discarded the jacket, and it fell unnoticed to the deck.

She was left wearing a simple white blouse, and not bothering with the buttons, Starbuck brutally ripped it away. The pilot cupped the twin mounds that popped into view, and began roughly to massage their nipples with the balls of her thumbs.

"Yeah," she muttered; "Boomer never was one to conceal her assets." Starbuck suddenly grabbed the Eight and violently threw her up against the wall. She gripped her wrists, pinned them high above her head, and brutally forced her way into Athena's unresisting mouth. The Eight moaned with pleasure, and thrust her hips forward, inviting Kara to take possession of the whole of her.

"You like it rough, don't you, Eight?" Starbuck kissed her on the shoulder, began nibbling with her teeth, and then bit down hard, drawing blood.

"More," Athena pleaded. "Make it hurt. Show me how much you love me!"

"Love you?" Starbuck laughed contemptuously. "You're just a blow-up doll … something they took off the shelf. You're nothing more than animated software made to mimic the woman I love. How could I possibly love you?"

"But you do," Athena protested, "because I'm her. I'm Boomer, and the sooner you accept that fact, the happier we're both going to be!"

Drawing upon her superior cylon strength, Athena twisted out of Starbuck's grasp. She lifted the astonished pilot off the deck, carried her across the room, and threw her roughly down on the bed. The Eight dropped on top of her, and getting a firm grip on Kara's hair, pinned her head in place. Athena kissed her hard, her lips and tongue unrelenting, while with her free hand she fumbled with the button on Kara's trousers. Losing patience, she savagely ripped the button loose and drove her hand into the yawning gap between her lover's legs. She forced her way in with two fingers, and began to stroke her.

Kara gasped in mingled surprise, pain, and pleasure. Gods, how she needed this!

Athena smugly stared down at her, not bothering to conceal her gleeful sense of triumph. "It looks like I'm not the only one who wants it rough," she crowed. Her fingers were sliding through Kara's juices, which were now flowing freely.

"Damn you," Starbuck moaned.

"Shut up," Athena ordered. "I don't want to hear a peep out of you, so just shut the frak up. I've got better things for you to do with your mouth." She lowered her breast into Kara's face, silently bidding her to suck on the proffered teat. Starbuck's lips eagerly slid open to accept the treasured gift, knowing just how Boomer liked it. She began gently to nibble with her teeth, sending wave after wave of pleasure coursing through Athena's body. Her spine began to pulsate, the crimson wave undulating in rhythm with the violent thrusts of her pelvis. Kara was her slave, body and soul, and she gloried in the proof of her ownership.

. . .

"Back off," Hadrian shouted. "It stops here, but only if you stand down … now!"

The marines fanned out around her and the prisoners, bringing their assault rifles to bear and releasing the safeties.

"Frak you," one of the bolder spirits in the crowd shouted in return.

"They're going to kill us all," Willie King screamed. He bolted, seeking safety in the crowd that was gathered less than three meters away.

"Stop," Hadrian screamed. She sighted in on the Sagittaron's right knee, intending to take him down, when her head exploded in a sea of blood and brains. A marine named Maldonado, a notorious malcontent, had his rifle on full auto, and his first burst cut Willie King in half. Parr was the next to open up, emptying his magazine as he methodically swept his rifle back and forth, mowing down the front rows of the densely packed mob like a sickle working its way through a wheat field. Two more marines went down, and a stray round caught Portia King squarely in the center of her forehead.

The marines were taking heavy fire from small arms within the crowd, and there was at least one sniper off somewhere in the distance, walking a long gun down the line.

Nathaniel Ferris knew a full-blown FUBAR when he saw it, and with his noncom and their two prisoners all dead, he also knew that it was time to get the hell out of Caprica City.

"Marines, we are leaving!" Pausing only long enough to pick up one of his fallen comrades, Ferris stumbled blindly back into the tent. The canvas wouldn't protect them from the sniper, but it was the only cover inside the kill zone, which made it better than nothing.

Maldonado used his knife to cut an opening on the back side, and staying low, the surviving marines leapt through the opening and sprinted for the shelter of the surrounding tents. They took no further fire, but they didn't relax until they were well beyond the edge of the Sagittaron zone.

The abortive attempt to arrest Portia King cost the lives of three marines and thirty-nine Sagittarons. An hour later, President Gaius Baltar formally declared a state of national emergency, and invoked martial law. Ninety minutes thereafter, when the Sagittaron delegate to the Quorum publicly refused to disclose the headquarters of the Sagittaron Brotherhood, the President made one last, desperate attempt to nip the rebellion in the bud. In the central marketplace, in front of a large gathering of humans and Cylons, Gaius Baltar declared Quentin Margus guilty of treason, and executed him with a single shot to the head.

It was the three hundred and sixty-third day of the exodus.